


Hunters

by peacehopeandrats



Series: Monthly Rumbelling 2021 [10]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling February 2021 (Once Upon A Time), Adventure, Gen, The Enchanted Forest (Once Upon a Time)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacehopeandrats/pseuds/peacehopeandrats
Summary: Belle is off to hunt for the Yaoguai, but is stopped by someone unexpected.Written for February's Monthly Rumbelling.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Series: Monthly Rumbelling 2021 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088708
Kudos: 12





	Hunters

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this fic was taken from the images of Belle and the wolf in the February Monthly Rumbelling moodboard at this link: https://a-monthly-rumbelling.tumblr.com/post/641933258078257152/prompts-for-february
> 
> I keep telling myself the shortness of this makes up for the length of Jefferson's fic.

“The monster is known to leave charred earth and markings in its wake and can be tracked easily by the trained eye. Keen hunters will notice blackened bark on trees surrounding the beast’s territory as well as burnt plant stalks and deep claw marks in the earth. This is thought to be the result of natural habitat marking. These indications are not widespread, however once one mark is found, a clear path can be followed.”

At the edge of the woods, Belle looked up from the book she held and began to walk along the line of trees stretching out ahead of her. Sore from her forced tumble off of the adventurers’ cart, she had to force her legs to move as she wished. Aching joints were not going to stop her from continuing this quest, even if she had to do it alone. Walking was best for the pain anyway. If she could keep moving through it she knew she would be fine.

When she reached the forest’s edge, she placed a gloved palm on the thick bark of the nearest tree and studied the place where her hand fell. The book she carried had described the assumed height of the yaoguai and if the images were accurate, the flames would be coming from the creature’s neck, which would have reached almost to this very point. Her hope now was not only one of support, but a visual cue to be on the look out for darker flecks in the wood that surrounded her.

Step by step, Belle inched forward, touching each of the trees as she passed. The clearing she was in was one known to be frequently visited by the yaoguai, so she hoped she would find evidence of its entry and exit somewhere among the first trees. Most creatures had a regular path that they followed to and from food or water or breeding grounds, either instinctively or because others had done so before them. These tracks became so well used that many times people would lay claim to them and use them to travel between villages. The road they had traveled on to get here was probably one such track, converted to something much larger over the span of generations. If the beast she hunted was like any other, it would return home using a singular path. All Belle needed to do was find its beginning.

She passed tree after tree, inspecting each for signs that the fiery beast might have passed it, walking for what felt like an hour through the border between the tall grass of the fields and the even taller green of the thick wood, but she found nothing to indicate she had headed off in the right direction. As the length of her shadow began to change, she felt the spark of doubt begin to burn inside of her.

“If the book is right, it _has_ to be here,” Belle muttered to herself after a time. Holding her arm up to the proper height had been tiring after a while and she’d lowered it to rest her shoulder, but now she wondered if she ought to have kept up the practice, just to make the smallest scorch mark easier to see. Would she have to go back and check again or was the book wrong about the area itself?

As if in answer, a rustling came from up ahead, stilling Belle outwardly, but making her heart jump hard in her chest. “Got you,” she whispered, more for her own benefit than as a warning to the yaoguai. The words gave her the confidence to step forward, hand at the hilt of her knife, but she managed only half of that step before a familiar snarl stopped her in her tracks.

Just beyond the first trees, hidden in the shadows created by a hollowed trunk and fallen pine, white teeth flashed at her. Lips pulled back in a fearsome show of might, the long nose of an angry wolf wrinkled in protest of her presence. The animal’s sharp eyes narrowed and she was instantly brought back to her last day with Rumplestiltskin.

“Shut up! Shut the hell up!” The words filled her ears and drowned out everything around her until they seemed to be coming from the angry wolf itself.

Her heart sank as she thought of Rumplestiltskin, felt the pain of being cast out all over again. The tight grip on her arm returned, wrenching her from the present and yanking her back into the past, down the stairs to her cell and tossing her inside as if she were nothing more than a sack of dirty laundry.

In front of her, the wolf growled again and Belle instinctively took a step back, hands partially lifted as if the wolf could understand the gesture of placation. Standing taller, with her arms partially extended seemed to make the animal hesitate, so she stretched herself to her full height and slowly extended her arms out further from her sides. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” she whispered. “See?”

The wolf had no care for her words and after a moment it began to slink forward, teeth gnashing as its black lips retreated further from around them.

“No one - no one - could ever love me!” Those teeth, all of that pain and anger, pressed from her memory right into her face again, refusing to let her go. Yet Belle fought it, closing her eyes to keep out the sight of the wolf and block the illusion of it repeating those words to her all over again. 

In front of her the snarl grew more intense and her eyes snapped back open see the wolf creeping closer, driving her from where she stood. It was almost completely out of the woods now and had gradually pressed forward as she shifted back. Tall grass began to brush at her legs and she wondered if there might be more wolves lurking in it, wanting to surround her before moving in for the kill. It was the nature of beasts, after all, to attack what they didn’t understand, to hunt when they were hungry, to try and kill the enemies they couldn’t drive away.

_No one could ever love me!_

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Belle whispered against her own better judgment. “See… I’m leaving.”

Behind the wolf she spoke to, another emerged from the darkness. This second one was more cautious, refusing to leave the place where it emerged. Belle stared in wonder at the beautiful gray animal, and took note of the heavy teats visible as it fretfully paced in front of the fallen tree. The hollow there was clearly its den and inside, she realized, there must be a litter of pups.

“You… You’re a father, aren’t you?” The words weren’t going to soothe the temper of the angry male intent on protecting its family, but she spoke them anyway. There was such intelligence in the angry eyes that Belle could almost believe she and the wolf could reach an understanding, even if such an idea was not at all rational.

She continued to back away, willing herself to appear as an animal who realized the danger of facing their opponent wasn’t worth the possible reward. Ahead of her the teeth flashed again and the growl intensified, but Belle refused to run. She continued her gradual retreat, moving one step at a time away from the wood’s edge and further into the clearing, where the wolf was clearly unwilling to go.

Once Belle was far enough away, the hostile posture of the wolf relaxed. His teeth were no longer visible, but his angry eyes continued to watch her as he paced, alternating a threatening stance with the unease of the predicament he’d been put in. 

“He was only protecting his young,” Belle told herself. The words described the wolf, yet an image of Rumplestiltskin came to her again, his cold eyes staring into hers as he stood close, trying to push her away.

_I’m not a coward, dearie. It’s quite simple, really. My power means more to me than you._

He called himself a beast and a monster, but Belle knew better. She knew there was a great kindness inside of him, she’d heard it when he talked about his son. Rumplestiltskin said the boy was lost and as she watched the wolves return to the woods, she wondered again at the story she hadn’t quite been told. Was there a connection between his magic and that loss? In those final moments that they had been together, had he just been as frightened as the wolf, protecting the one thing he had left in the world that he lived in?

With the wolves gone, Belle turned with a sigh to take in her surroundings. She would need to stay clear of the wolf’s section of forest, but refused to give up in her search otherwise. The yaoguai would be much larger than most animals of the forest and the flame it was fabled to wear was certain to keep them away. If she could find the monster’s territory, she might be safe.

For a single heartbeat, Belle’s chest clenched with regret, her own thoughts haunting her now instead of the wolf’s white fangs, but then something in the tall grass caught her attention, consuming it quickly. There, not a carriage length away, was a blackened clump of dead, straw-like growth and beyond it, closer to the woods, was another. Her eyes followed the evidence into the trees and lifted to climb the slope of the nearest mountain.

Belle looked back in the direction of the village, then took a deep breath to ready herself for what was ahead. “There’s a difference between protecting yourself and attacking others,” she told the distant creature. “And I can’t allow you to terrorize these people any more.”

Checking that her knife and the bag of fairy dust were secured tightly at her side, Belle reopened the book to the last page she’d read and glanced down at the information once more.

“Now I start to climb.”


End file.
